A maker cancelled two days before the workshop. What actually happens next?

Why does the workshop still say fully booked after a refund?

Because a refund gives back the money and does not give back the place. Inside bindro the count only comes down when a booking ENDS — a cancellation — and a plain refund does not end it. The session therefore keeps showing "Fully booked" after you have refunded somebody, and the place they gave up is not on sale.

A cancellation is the other path and it does free the place: if the maker cancels themselves inside a window you published with a share you keep, bindro refunds the rest, ends the booking and puts the place back on sale in the same act. Cancelling the order yourself in the console does the same thing — though not after a full refund, which leaves nothing to cancel.

So the limitation is narrower than "cancellations do not refill": it is that a refund on its own does not. If that is what happened, you do the first step.

Does the waiting list not handle this?

Not for cancellations, no. The waiting list is real and it works: a fully booked session shows a join form, and when a place is genuinely free the worker promotes whoever is at the front of the queue, holds a place for them for 24 hours and emails them a link straight into checkout. Exactly one person is promoted per free place, in the order they joined, and joining twice does not get anybody two turns.

The catch is what counts as free. The promoter looks at capacity minus sold minus held, and a plain refund does not reduce sold — so a refund on its own creates nothing for it to see. In practice the queue fires in three situations: a maker cancels inside a window you published with a share you keep, which ends the booking and returns the place; somebody abandons a checkout and their ten-minute hold lapses; or you raise the session's capacity yourself. The first two need nothing from you.

• The queue promotes one maker per genuinely free place, oldest first.
• A promotion holds the place for 24 hours and emails a direct checkout link.
• A refund creates no free place, so it wakes nobody.
• Raising capacity by one does create a free place, and the next sweep promotes.

What is the routine when somebody cancels?

Two minutes, once, and the queue does the rest. Open the workshop, find the session the maker cancelled from, and raise that session's capacity by one. If anybody is waiting, the next worker pass promotes the front of the queue, holds their place and emails them; if nobody is waiting, the place simply goes back on public sale and your page stops saying fully booked.

Keep one number in your head while you do it: capacity is now one higher than the room, until the place sells. If the promoted maker does not take it within 24 hours the hold lapses and the place is available again, which is usually what you want. If you have raised capacity several times across a term, sanity-check the sessions against the number of stools you actually own before the day.

Can I stop cancellations happening in the first place?

Partly, and with one setting. On your refund policy page you publish how many hours before the session self-service refunds stop, and what share you keep if a maker cancels inside that window; bindro applies both without you, ends the booking and puts the place back on sale. What it still cannot do is take a deposit or hold a card, so nobody is charged for simply not arriving.

The second setting is the reminder, and it is per workshop rather than a studio-wide switch: on that workshop's Reminders page, tick "Send a reminder for this workshop" and choose how many hours ahead, and every booking on it is emailed once that many hours before the session — 24 is the usual lead for an evening class. It is off until you tick it, and nothing is sent for a workshop where nobody has, so a term of weekly classes means ticking the box as you generate them.

The rest is unglamorous and yours. Put your own terms in the workshop description where a maker reads them before paying, and use the maker history in the console to see who has booked before and who turned up. Neither is enforced by bindro, and both move the number.

• A cancellation window and the share you keep inside it: both published by you, both applied automatically. No deposit and no card on file — neither exists.
• One reminder email per booking, a set number of hours before the session — per workshop, and off until you tick it on.
• The console shows a maker's history across your workshops, including attendance.